LOL...you guys & gals are great! 
Thanks for the Acronis tip, I'll check it out. If the Nero BackItUp doesn't work out, I'll definitely pick it up.
I guess if it wasn't this way you could buy a drive duplicator, spec up a warehouse full of systems, and actually open up a PC store on a single OS copy.
The crazy thing is there's nothing in the software that would prevent this if the machines were identical.
With the activation checks built into Vista, this kind of anti-piracy is redundant and an annoyance to the user.
The question is, if CarGuy returns the new larger drive in exchange for the exact same size and specs as the original, will his backup work then?
If I picked up the same size drive as the one before it should have restored just fine.
It's funny, I actually bought a smaller drive. The one I picked up was much faster than a larger one so I traded size for speed. I was pleasantly surprised that I could really tell the differance...the system is much faster and it has shaved off an hour or two of render time on a one minute avi.
Theres a lot of things MS tries to slip in. Some get in and some don't. Like the one that hasn't yet is the they are not part of our partnership so we cannot recognize them, so your system won't work.
Not sure if MS could get away with that one. If they did, it would be time to look for a new OS.
